Biblio

"Our findings showed that blame was contagious, but not among those who felt psychologically secure. So try to foster a chronic sense of inner security in order to reduce the chances that you'll lash out at others."

"Highly creative individuals have long noted the salutary effects of creative activity on both physical and mental health. Many types of creative work can relieve stress and enhance positive mood, two major factors in promoting good health."

"When you find yourself stuck on some problem or issue, taking a trip or simply immersing in a new environment often brings up synchronistic solutions. The trouble is, we can't mentally 'will' ourselves to go to this new place. Our minds know how to analyze, compartmentalize and dissect; they know how to churn things around in circles. They do not know how to enter the imaginal."

"You can no longer expect your professional standing to progress if you dont have an easily accessible, broadly informative presence on the Web. And while that virtual existence is essential in itself, it's not enough. You have to contribute something..."

"Everyone I meet has their own baggage of humanity, foibles that I would find it easy to criticize. But if I can reduce the amount of critical aggression I bring to a situation, my relationships become easier."

"This first boom in personality testing reached its apogee with Henry C. Link's Employment Psychology, in 1919, in which he proclaimed:

'The ideal employment method is undoubtedly an immense machine which would receive applicants of all kinds at one end, automatically sort, interview, and record them, and finally turn them out at the other end nicely labeled with the job which they are to do.'

"In contrast to justice and acceptance, forgiveness is not only the recovery of our spirit, but also the enlargement of that spirit—somehow, some way—to imagine the humanity of the injuring person. And why would we want that?
In a great injury, something is broken, psychologically or spiritually. The break not only erodes our sense of living in a fair world, corrupts our experience of our own worth, and fragments our control over our own lives and emotions; it also fundamentally damages our faith in the worthiness of others. It is that loss of the other that we absorb, and somehow transform, in forgiveness."

"But we spend eight to ten to twelve hours of our daily lives at work, where we have no say. I think when anthropologists dig us up 400 years from now—if we make it that far—they're going to say, 'Look at these people back then. They thought they were free. They called themselves a democracy, but they spent ten hours of every day in a totalitarian situation and they allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.'
Truly they're going to laugh at us the way we laugh at people 150 years ago who put leeches on people's bodies to cure them."

"[Helena Cronin's] version of Darwinism shows that altruism and generosity create more rewards than their opposites do. She introduced the CEOs to the flip side of paranoia: "pronoia"—the idea that everyone is not out to get you, but that they are out to love you, or at least to appreciate you, if you reciprocate. According to the new Darwinism, only the pronoid survive—in fact, only the pronoid endure and flourish."

"This [study result] suggests that even fleeting feelings of power can dramatically change the way people respond to information. Instead of analyzing the strength of the argument, those with authority focus on whether or not the argument confirms what they already believe. If it doesn't, then the facts are conveniently ignored."

"Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres."

"Under such a system [of performance appraisal], in which one's livelihood can be destroyed by a self-serving boss trying to meet a budget or please the higher-ups, what employee would ever speak his mind? What employee would ever say that the boss is wrong, and offer an idea on how something might get done better?
Only an employee looking for trouble."

"This false notion suggests that you get better outcomes by eliminating the weaker member of a group. That is supported by another Darwinian misreading: Only the strong survive, and the outcome will be better if you have people of first-rate strength. These assumptions have become the foundation of growth, progress, and capitalism: stronger, better, more. But they are not part of Darwinism. Darwin's insight was that competition can lead to all sorts of new ecological niches. If predators are devouring animals (like you) during the day, you might become nocturnal. If predators are becoming stronger or larger, you could become smaller, more mobile, or less visible. There is nothing vengeful or vindictive about Darwinian theory. Invoking Darwin to justify cutthroat behaviors is wrong."

"Corporations have used all of the control mechanisms at hand, techniques that have become both more sophisticated and punishing, to get fewer workers to convert ever more of their labor power into actual effort. This is true not just for manufacturing concerns like auto companies, which pioneered modern Taylorism, but by all private businesses (and public sector establishments such as colleges and the Social Security Administration), including especially today those in the service sector."

"In fact, in the case of hard work ideology, the overeducation effect is actually increasing in strength. That is, overqualified workers are increasingly likely to disavow the "American Dream" of success through hard work alone."

"In fact, the change from the role of patient or client to a new role as worker in society is fragile at best. The journey to employment requires a more sensitive approach from all involved individuals (the worker, the professionals, family, and friends) to the extent that everyone can successfully leverage the potential and ability of the worker with an appreciation of the limitations that are part of the illness."